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Rating: What a strange character Johnny Hodges must have been. Starting from the end: he dies on a dentist's chair. From a heart attack. Which - there is no doubt - makes him likable to me. The dentist's chair. And perhaps the fear of being there. And the heart that can't take it.
To make him even more likable was that he mentored a young boy who would turn everything upside down, even what Johnny had played for a lifetime. A young boy named John Coltrane.
Johnny played the sax. The alto sax, and the soprano sax. Sometimes, but less often, the tenor. And he played, almost always, for the Duke. They called him Rabbit; the reason isn't very clear. Some say it's because he liked vegetables. Others say it was because he was totally expressionless. Maybe because of the teeth, who knows. Nicknames, in those days, weren't really understood where they came from. They just came, maybe as a joke, maybe one evening, and you kept them on you. Forever. So much so that when the Duke, writing a piece, had to say here comes Johnny, he would write Rab on the score. And that was enough.
Johnny plays the sax, in the Duke's orchestra. The Duke writes for him. And he plays it like few others. And above all, he plays it while looking elsewhere. He plays it languidly and sensually. He plays it with no expressions on his face. Ever. Perhaps that's why they call him Rabbit. For his gaze. Expressive as that of a rabbit. Because Johnny holds back. It's the Fifties, he's black, life is no joke. It's suffering. But he doesn't care. The absent gaze, the voice of his instrument always sweet, always sensual.
One day Johnny meets Billy Strayhorn. He is Duke Ellington's partner. And they become friends. They become comrades. It's hard to imagine a more mismatched pair. Johnny is a big man, doesn't talk to anyone. When he plays, he seems to be elsewhere. Billy is a genius, he’s nice, he’s gay, he’s a dandy. He’s someone who hides nothing of the world he has inside. He’s someone who brings it out. And who wants everyone to know it.
Together they play wonderful things. If you feel like it, look for the suite Star Crossed Lover, and you will know what I'm talking about.
Then, as you probably know, soon, too soon, Billy leaves. He's thirty and is taken away by one of those things we still dare not name. One of those things we are used to saying is a 'brutto male'.
The Duke - it's the summer of 1967 - dedicates a wonderful and passionate album to him: ... and his mother called him Bill, which if you don't have, you don't know what the adjective 'poignant' means. It’s an album of Billy's songs. Among these, Blood Count. Billy wrote it on the bed where he would die. He wrote it for Johnny Hodges. There, in that album, Johnny plays it. With his gaze elsewhere, without expression, holding everything inside. Sweet and languid, while inside he’s angry, he’s furious.
A story he doesn't want to tell. A story that must remain - like all the others - inside him. That must not come out. That must not be told.
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